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Village Squire, 1977-10, Page 24could have owned if he had the money. No one has that kind of money anymore. Now they've gone back to using horses, and that seems to do as well. We had one of those stands of bush at the back of our farm and each farm's clump of trees connected across the township. That's where the deer live, even now. Sometimes we'd spot them on our hikes. We'd be off with a bag of cookies and peanut butter sandwiches, heading for the fort we'd built between the trees and come there to find it half fallen down. Boys aren't the best builders, and I guess our tools weren't much either. Lashing the poles together with string, we used bark for the roof and leaves for the floor. They were good times, lying on our backs, smelling the rotten leaves below and the fresh green ones above, dreaming boys dreams of fame and riches. See, the meadow got to be my favourite. place for dreaming. Three of us found it one day by accident. That particular fort was built by a stream in the middle of the bush. One day we went out "exploring" eastward and where we thought we'd find that year's cornfield, we found the hidden meadow. I still must say that that was the prettiest piece of God's earth 'I've ever seen, and I knew it then when I was nine years old. That meadow was like a beautiful lady or a fine wild horse. I fell in love when we broke through the bush and I saw her lying there so peacefully. We feel that way about them, wanting chastity from a woman and the untouchedness of freedom from a wild creature; that was how the meadow was, and why I loved it. She was abandoned too, the still field ever forgotten since the day she was cleared by someone broke into stillness and then cleared out himself. He left four walls of bush on every side of her and a stream flowing through the middle. I guess I thought she was enchanted after awhile, because in all the years that I went back to sit on a log by the stream I never saw brush creep up on her, never saw the forest moving to reclaim her from the sunlight. I never knew any man but myself to go there either. Well. I see the children coming home from school and there's the first father stepping down from the city car at the end of the street. Years ago they tell me there would have been automobiles parked where the tlowers are now. I remember automobiles well, even had one once. We never went to the city then, and I think that's the reason why, that your own automobile just couldn't fit into what space the city had left to cars after fitting in all the people and buildings. I remember Mr. Baines who lived down the road went to the city with his wife to take her to a special doctor. He said he drove for two hours waiting for her to be done, because he couldn't find a place to park his car. • Anyway we've got electric city cars now. They say it's cleaner here now, but it wasn't to make things cleaner that the old world we lived in finally changed. It was for all those other people in all the far parts of the world we always heard were hungry, countries in the fires of wars, people poorer than our poorest ever were. I was never there in those parts of the world. But I believed that it was that bad because my friend Roger Baines did go. and wrote back, telling about the stink of poverty and the starvation of children. Roger was a particular friend of mine. I believe 1 went on a few hikes with him, after my brothers got to be too old for such pastimes. I guess it's because of him that 1 believed what I heard about the rest of the world. He wrote a fine letter and I spent a lot of time in the hidden meadow thinking about what he wrote, the troubled letters he sent home from the far parts of the earth. Roger wanted things to change. It started slow enough at first, but when it really started it was as if the world had caught fire and we were all set to burn away in our trouble and hatred. There were wars then, bad ones, a whole burning of all of us, burnt by the loss of sons, the death of nations, burnt by the daily deadly fear that some moment's overflow of anger would shatter the earth with a blow she'd never recover from. It was burning so we could start building again, if we survived. I believe what I've heard about those wars because Roger never came back. 1 could smell ashes then. Sitting by the side of the meadow. I smelt the ashes of the whole world in the last of Roger Baines' letters. I was glad to have the meadow then, even if that was a seltish HARVESTOF BRAIM5 MEN'S & BOY'S DEPARTMENT • Slacks • Jeans • Shirts • Jackets • Windbreakers • Suits GERRAJID$ GODERICH, CLINTON & MITCHELL LADIES' & GIRLS DEPARTMENT • Dresses • Coats • Slacks • Blouses • Pant Tops YOUR •IN -TOWN SHOPPING CENTRES 22, VILLAGE SQUIRE/OCTOBER 1977.